Claymation Workshop
This week the Elements animators has a big step up in their ambition. They went from 2d to 3d and dealt for the first time in Clay Animation. We used midubot armatures wrapped in plasticine tondevelop our characters and hen created some simple narratives from there.
Animators Get Going with their First Character Animation
For the last few weeks the Elements animators have been building up their skills and understanding of animation practicing basic exercises to help refine their understanding of the process of stop motion.
In the last session we developed this into a simple character with the “story” of them jumping off a high platform onto a trampoline. This gives students the chance to practice some of the key principles of animation such as stretch and squash, arcs of motion, easing and anticipation. Here are some of the examples of what they created. Enjoy!!
2017 Elements Animators Get to Work with Ink and Brush
After significant disruption to the start of the Elements year thanks to 2 typhoons the Elements animators finally got a chance to work on their first creative project using Ink and Brush as the medium. This abstract exercise is there to practice easing – the slow in and slow out principle of animation that is a starting point for students to consider the nature of movement. This is very much a piece of free expression and at the end of the session all the students’ work is put together into a show reel which is below. Watch out for some beautiful flow at 14- 22 seconds and again at 30 seconds in. Enjoy!!
Animators Get Going on Personal Projects
The Elements animators have spent the last few weeks thinking about communication and how to originate a piece of animation that effectively communicates. The last couple of weeks we have been experimenting with materials and set ups to try to understand the complexities with bringing to life their ideas. Come back soon for the outcomes.
Armature Animations
This week we got to finally animate our armatures and apply the thinking about animation that we have been working on for the last few weeks. There was a perceptible quality improvement in all the outcomes with a few of the groups really excelling this week. Temujin, Jaden, Maximilien and Alvin deserve a special acknowledgement and Conrad, Julio, Allessandro, Sarah, all produced some really nice aspects in their work. The story to animate was that the character is sitting when a piece of paper falls, they notice it, pick it up and react. The choice of reaction at the end was up to the students to choose and communicate. Please enjoy!!
Temujin
Maximilien and Alvin
Conrad and Julio
Jaden
Sarah
Allessandro
Animated armatures
This week we have been extending the work in character animation by developing armatures – the skeletons that are covered in clay or other materials to form characters in stop motion. Next week we will bring them alive!
Animation workshop 3
This week the animators went through some physical exercises to help connect them with the physicality of animation. Gesture and posture were part of the learning before taking this experience back to the animation of their characters.
We also looked at some mime comedy by 2 Japanese guys called gamarjobat. Worth checking out in YouTube!!
Character Animation Workshop week 2
Some further images from the second week of character animation. The students were given a starting brief of a character waking up, sitting up, standing, stretching, waving and then sitting down again. From then on they have more creative freedom with what their characters will do. Hopefully we will have some video soon. For now enjoy the pictures.
Character animation workshop 1
This week the elements stop motion animators are starting with some character animation using silhouette paper cut outs. Emily Ng our animator in residence came in to lead the workshop and get the students thinking started. First the characters were discussed and sketched then cut out of card. As we progress we will be looking at bringing these characters to life in simple action sequences exploring how posture and gesture co
mmunicate emotion. 
Stop Motion Animation
The stop motion elements students work on individual abstract ink and paper animations for their first stop motion project. We put these together in a quick show real as a whole sequence to extend the piece. Enjoy!!
